Population
The ultimate goal of terraforming is to create viable worlds for human beings. At first your people will be forced to live in habitations and your growth will be primarily from immigration, but eventually native births will start to pick up and, once the planet can support fauna, your people will live freely on the surface. Introduction Note: There is currently a bug where if your planet has passed the 9999 year mark, population will show to be 0. It will be fixed in the next update. Population is a basic measure of how many people live on your world. Population growth can be earned in four ways. * The first way is through the facilities Children's Creche, Transit Network, Spaceport and Coral Reef. This is the population growth that is boosted by the 'Population' effect some governors have. * The second way is through native birthrate. This is the population growth that is boosted by the 'Birthrate' effect that some governors have. * The third way is through events like Population Boom. * The fourth way is through the Space Elevator. When your planet reaches the 'habitable' habitability, your population will increase beyond your habitation limits, because people will be living freely on the surface, although they will still be considered part of a city. If your world becomes uninhabitable, all population in excess of your hab facility limits immediately disappears. Habitations Build habitations such as the Hab Unit, the Hab Complex and the Hab Dome for your population to live in. How much population your Hab facilities can accommodate is influenced by your world's culture. The Sons of Hephaestus start out being able to squeeze 30% more people into habs because of a cultural bonus. Daughters of Gaia start off with a -15% decrease in hab capacities. The Itty Bitty Living Space event, exclusive to the Sons of Hephaestus can allow your Hab facilities in a city to fit more population. This is a one-off habitation boost applied to a city, not to a specific Hab facility. It is not a boost per minute, even though that is incorrectly indicated in the Local Culture tab of the city the event happened in. The governors Gwynn Badejo, Pim Jansson, Te Hau Arataki and Rex Jansson have effects that increase the amount of population that can fit within the Hab facilities in the city they are assigned to. Hab facilities can be built in cities or on Natural Satellites (moons). Population Growth Facilities Build facilities that increase population such as the Children's Creche, the Transit Network, the Spaceport and the Coral Reef to get more people to live in your Hab facilities. How much population increase such facilities provide is influenced by your world's culture. The UNSA starts off with a 30% cultural bonus to population growth, which changes how many people the Spaceport (etc) add to your city per minute, and on top of that, they get the Population Boom event to further increase population. Horizon Corporation starts off with a -15% decrease in population growth, so their spaceports don't add as many people. The governors Dae-Hyun Yu, Ayzia Aoyama, Johanna Longhair, David Munoz and Buzz Sullivan have effects that increase the population growth facilities such as the Spaceport or Children's Creche provide in the city they are assigned to. This effect does not affect population growth earned through events such as Population Boom, or population growth earned through the Space Elevator. Facilities that increase population can be built in cities and on Natural Satellites (moons). Birthrate Buildings that increase your population are great to kick things off, but in late game, with populations large enough, native birthrates will overshadow any population increase buildings could possibly grant you. Native birthrate is a little over 0,05% of your city's population per minute. For example, if my city has 1,000,000 population, native birthrate will be about 600 per minute (but if it's boosted with transmissions, that obviously doubles). The governors Yvonne Genet, Anyu Peratrovich, Etta Thitapura and Buzz Sullivan have effects that increase the birthrate of the city they are assigned to. This effect does not affect population growth earned through facilities such as the Children's Creche, as that is not considered under native birthrate. Earth has an enormous birthrate right from the start. That's where you can go experience what that's like. Biomass Consumption People living outside of habitations will consume biomass, while people living inside habitations will not. Keep an eye on that, because extremely large populations might eat all the biomass there is on the planet if left alone for too long, and this will cause mass die-offs. This is not a problem when you play with biospheres, as in that mode your population does not consume biomass. If you have an extremely large population, native birth rates will go through the roof, and you will not be able to sustain that long term no matter how many Coral Reefs you build. This is why all worlds will eventually need the Sky Farm satellite, which is capable of sustaining an infinitely large population. At a certain point, numbers will stop to be displayed and population will simply read "infinite". It is not confirmed when this happens exactly, but it is likely to be 2^128-1, about 3.4*10^38. The governors Raj Ahmad Shah, Justus Black, Sofia Ishtar Batma and Rebecca Freyja O'Rourke have effects that reduce the amount of biomass the population in the city they are assigned to consumes. Disappearing Population When a city loses all its population, it also loses all its cultural traits ("Local Culture") and Culture Revenue, which you accumulate through random events. Be sure to always have multiple hab facilities per city, in case a fire breaks out and you lose a hab facility, because you really don't want that one fire to mean you lose all of your cultural revenue in an entire city. Earthquakes can take out multiple hab facilities in one go, but they rarely do. Flooding your city will make the whole city disappear permanently, not just the population. If your city has 0 population, even though it has hab facilities, and you don't know why, build a new hab facility. It'll kickstart a new population in that city. This may fix a bug that killed your population, or it may just be a temporary solution as whatever killed your population in the first place will strike again. When you play with biospheres, some species will increase or decrease your population slightly if you give them those traits. If you are playing a world that already had an established biosphere before you arrived, check if any of the species your planet harbors are poisonous and killing off your population. The Plague Outbreak and Rising Crime Rates events can also kill/remove inhabitants. Buildings under construction will continue to be built even if a city is abandoned with 0 population. Building Slots One critical importance of population in a city is that it controls how many slots for buildings you have in that city. When you first place a city, it comes with a basic Hab Unit if your world is uninhabitable for humans. If your world is habitable, that first Hab Unit will not automatically be placed. A city normally starts at 100 population (less if your world's culture doesn't allow a basic Hab Unit to house that many people), but if population in a city dwindles to 0 population for whatever reason, you can only build one building - it has to be a habitation so your population can grow and increase your number of slots. Otherwise, spaces unlocked seems to use a milestone system - once you reached a certain population you can still have the spaces when the population is reduced below it. Genesis Points can be spent to add an extra facility even if you don't have space, with cost increasing the more facilities you already have. Interestingly, the game seems to prevent you from being forced to spend GP by automatically unlocking a higher milestone - this is observed at between 100 and 250 population (4 slots), and if the Hab Units are disabled, the number of habitations and population drops to zero, but the game automatically gives you a free slot as if you have reached 250 population, so you can build a new Hab building (preferably a Hab Dome). It is unknown whether this applies in other scenarios. On Natural Satellites, all slots are immediately available regardless of the number of population that lives there, but if no population lives there yet, you can only build Hab Units, Hab Complexes and Hab Domes. You can only start building Spaceports, Transit Networks and Children's Creches when your population on that natural satellite is above 0. Culture Points Culture Points are gained upon reaching total population milestones. Culture points can be taken away when population drops below these milestones because of die-offs. You can regain those points when you reach those milestones again. If you have already spent them, they won't be taken away but you also can't gain more points when you reach those milestones again. Earth is an exception as you begin with over 7 billion population. You only get 4 culture points for this however, and would get the next at 8 billion. You may lose those 4 points if you don't spend them before your population plummets due to losing cities, but oddly if you lose all population you can get the first point at 2 billion. Buildings Trivia *It is possible to declare independence and achieve victory with zero population (impossible with UNSA due to their population requirement, and with Daughters of Gaia due to paradise habitability meaning people will live on the planet outside your control), despite being a violation of common sense. You will need to have a population at some point to get culture points from events and population milestones, but once the points are spent, they are not taken back if you disable Habs (which causes all population to be lost on planets with barren or plantlife habitabilities). Category:Content